Often Irreverent, Mostly Rational Blog for Fans of the Toronto Blue Jays. One Day, We'll Be Perfect.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Out with the old and in with the older

After spending most of the day on the road and incommunicado, we were greeted at home to a frantic voicemail from Shortwaveboy, giving us the 411 on this whole Glaus for Rolen tomfoolery.

(Funny side note: we just got back from a late Christmas gift exchange with the in-laws, which included a Jays t-shirt emblazoned with Troy Glaus' name and number. Seriously. What are the odds?)

So what the hell does it all mean?

We'd tend to side with the G&M's Jeff Blair, who writes that if Rolen is healthy, this is a much better deal for the Jays. Of course, we'd place some real heavy emphasis on the IF, because Rolen's last four seasons have been plagued by a litany of injuries, both small and large. He's also two years older than Glaus, so the end of the productive portion of his career might be closer than we think. (Then again, Glaus looked like an eighty year-old on the basepaths last year, so many those two years aren't as big a deal as we think.)

There is a concern with the fact that Rolen has yapped his way out of two cities, although the two managers (Larry Bowa in Philly, Tony "Red Light" LaRussa in STL) that got under his skin were meddlesome egomaniacs, and geniuses in their own minds. And we can all agree that whatever Gibby is, he isn't any of those things.

There's many a slip between a cup and a lip, and finishing this deal off will require waiving no trade clauses and clear physicals, the latter of which would be a minor niracle for these two rustbuckets.